The chair of the Department of Neurology, Waxman holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pharmacology and directs Yale's PVA/EPVA Center for Neuroscience Research at the West Haven Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is neurologist-in-chief at the Yale-New Haven Medical Center and co-director of the Yale-University College London Collaboration on Neural Repair.

Waxman has devoted much of his career to studying nerve fibers that have lost their protective myelin coat. His research on nerve impulse conduction in normal and demyelinated nerve fibers (or axons) has revealed that damaged axons can reorganize themselves and establish new sodium channels, even in areas that have been stripped of their myelin. The Yale neurologist has also explored ways to rescue nerve fibers before they degenerate or die, and is engaged in investigations on how to regrow nerve fiber. As a result of his research, clinical trials and other therapeutic strategies are being developed to treat patients with MS and nerve injuries.

Waxman has written or edited a number of books, including "The Axon," "Diseases of the Spine and Spinal Cord" and the forthcoming "Multiple Sclerosis as a Neuronal Disease."

A graduate of Harvard College, Waxman earned Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He completed his residency at Boston City Hospital. He taught at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University before joining the Yale faculty in 1986. Since 1998, he has also been a visiting professor at University College and the Institute of Neurology in London.

The Yale scientist has received numerous honors for his work, including the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's Reingold Award and the Wartenberg Award from the American Academy of Neurology. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and the American Academy of Neurology, and is an elected member of Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among other scholarly societies.